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A few days ago I did a paid review post titled A Timesaving Site for Domain Flippers in which the site in question was a domain listing aggregator. In the review I discussed domain flipping and how I felt it was one of the easiest ways to making money online.

To my surprise, several people commented asking just what exactly domain flipping was and how to go about it. Therefore, I created this in-depth walkthrough tutorial which gives a pretty good overview of the domain flipping process as well as a plethora of tips from my past experience when I used to do domain flipping.

I apologize in advance for the low quality audio. I had tried saving the screencast as a WMV file before uploading to reduce the file size but the audio suffered. Also, about halfway into the video, Notepad is cut off partially so I apologize for that as well.

I hope those of you who are not already familiar with domain flipping found the screencast useful. If you liked the video, please take 5 seconds to Digg this post, thanks!

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As stated last month, doing weekly updates of the past affiliate competitions seemed a bit too repetitive so I’m now only doing 3 updates per month: the launch, midway update, and final results. I was a bit late in publishing this post so it’s a couple days past the midway point but better late than never, right?

There’s still plenty of time to register and earn your way to a prize (or prizes) so don’t let starting a little bit late affect your decision. In fact, it’s ridiculously easy to grab a spot in the New Referrals category; all you currently need to do is generate $12.81 to take the lead into 1st and be eligible to win yourself an 8GB iPod Touch. Or, generate $3.81 and you’ll be on track to take home an 8GB iPod Nano. Or, generate ONE CENT in commissions and you’ll be in 3rd place to take home $50…

For those of you who have signed up but are having trouble making any leads or sales, keep working at it! Part of the great thing about this competition is that it really pushes and encourages you to make more money through affiliate marketing. I know of at least a few contestants who have surprised themselves by raking in a lot more dough that they thought they could, simply due to the nature of competition.

Prizes

Before I get to the rankings, here is a reminder of what is up for grabs. Full details of the prizes and contest details can be found at the original contest page.

Top Main Affiliates ($0-49,999)

• 1st Place: Playstation 3 & Rock Band Special Edition
• 2nd Place: Dell 24-inch Widescreen Flat-Panel LCD HD Monitor
• 3rd Place: 16GB iPod Touch
• 4th Place: Flip Mino Video Camera
• 5th Place: $150 Prepaid ML Rewards Card

Top New Affiliates

• 1st Place: 8GB iPod Touch
• 2nd Place: 8GB iPod Nano
• 3rd Place: $50 Prepaid ML Rewards Card

$50,000-$74,999 VIP Tier

• 1st Place: Sony HD Home Theater Projector

$75,000-$99,999 VIP Tier

• 1st Place: LG - Scarlet 52″ 1080p 120Hz Flat-Panel LCD HDTV + $400

$75,000-$99,999 VIP Tier

• 1st Place: Alienware Area-51 ALX Computer Package

Random Blog Draws:

• 1st Place: $20 Prepaid MarketLeverage Rewards Card
• 2nd Place: $20 Prepaid MarketLeverage Rewards Card
• 3rd Place: $20 Prepaid MarketLeverage Rewards Card
• 4th Place: $20 Prepaid MarketLeverage Rewards Card
• 5th Place: $20 Prepaid MarketLeverage Rewards Card

Current Rankings

Here are the latest rankings as of November 17th, 7:30PM Pacific time.

I’ve now referred a total of 124 affiliates to MarketLeverage, of which 12 signed up during this current competition.

Together, during this competition thus far, they’ve generated a total of $49,016.80 in commissions in just 17 days. The current leaderboards are shown below:

As should be no surprise, “The Behemoth” has continued to show his complete and utter dominance in these competitions, having generated over $42,000 with MarketLeverage in just 17 days. The undefeated, four-time competition winner is on a good pace to hit the $75,000 VIP tier. I’ve talked to him and he really wants that big screen TV!

The rest of the leaders, CD9050, CD10565, CD8083, and CD8137 are all regulars. CD10565 seems to have halted or slowed down his campaign which means CD8083 can catch up and overtake him by the end of the month if he works hard.

Out of the 12 new sign-ups to MarketLeverage this month, only 2 of them have generated any commissions so far. The first place is currently at $12.80 so you only need to generate $12.81 to overtake first place to win an iPod Touch! If that isn’t a deal I don’t know what is. If you haven’t signed up yet, I highly suggest you do…

Blogging Entrants

So far 9 people have blogged about this competition. That means that as it stands right now, if you wrote a blog post about this competition, your odds of winning would be exactly 50% since there are 5 prizes available. Writing a blog post for a 50% chance to pocket an easy $20? Not bad…

Competition Goals and Thoughts

My personal goal for this competition was for the total amount of commissions to hit $75,000. After 17 days, the total stands at $49,016.80 so we’re actually on pace to hit over $85,000 let alone $75,000… keep it up!

At the same time, I’m a bit disappointed with the level of participation in this 5th competition. Out of the 124 affiliates who signed up, only a handful are generating any revenue. I guess this boils down to the Pareto principle (80% of your sales comes from 20% of your clients) but I’m just surprised that with all of the prizes up for grabs that more people aren’t participating.

If you haven’t signed up yet, come on and join the fun! Even if you don’t place in this competition, you’ll be all set up and ready to go for the next one. I hope to see you on the leaderboard list soon!

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The following is a paid review and is completely of my own opinion and is not influenced by being paid. If you’re interested in having me review your site or product, please view my advertising page.

Several years ago, before I had multiple consistent streams of revenue coming in, one of the methods I used to make money online was domain flipping. Domain flipping, just like it sounds, is simply the act of buying a domain to sell at a higher price.

Domain flipping is actually one of the main things I suggest to those who are brand new to making money online and want to get started bringing money in. It’s a very low-risk endeavour and really only requires an $8 startup fee (to buy a domain). While domain flipping can be very tedious at times, it’s also very easy to learn and do and thus great to those dipping their toes into the make money online arena for the first time.

I had made some decent money back in the day by flipping domains. It was nothing spectacular: it started at around a $25 profit off a $30 investment, then as I learned more it grew to perhaps a $100 profit off a $60 investment, and then into the higher ranges such as a $600 profit off a $200 investment. It’s similar to house flipping - the more experience and cash you have, the more expensive houses (domains) you can invest in and flip.

In fact, I was so into domains that I even bought the domain and site DomainForums.com for $10,000 in 2005 (which I later flipped for $14,000 a couple months later).

To find the domains, all I did was (apart from checking recently expired domain lists and checking for available domains) frequent the various domain forums where domains were listed for sale. There are a number of very large webmaster and domain forums where members can post their domains for sale. I simply scoured these forums every day to find my domains names.

The four main forums I used were Sitepoint, DNForum, NamePros, and Digitalpoint. Those forums have so many new domains posted up every day it’s crazy. In addition, there are thousands of active members who scour those threads as well which means that when you post your domain up for sale it has an extremely high chance of being bid on, if not bought out altogether.

There are so many new domains added every day that it would literally take me hours to go through those 4 forums to search through all the domains. Finding a domain that you can make a profit on is like finding a needle in a haystack in those forums, simply because of the immense amount of new domains constantly being listed. Most of them are crap, but chances are you can find at least a few every day that you’ll be able to profit on.

This is where WeGotDomain.com comes in. WeGotDomain is essentially an aggregator for domain name classifieds listed on webmaster forums. It collects domains listed for sale on DNForum, Digitalpoint, Sitepoint, NamePros, eBay, DomainForums (Heh, coincidentally the site I used to own), and DomainState and organizes them all into a searchable database.

In addition, WeGotDomain lists the price, PageRank, number of backlinks, and other information for each domain to make evaluating each domain simple. This was another step in the equation for domain hunting manually that took extra time. Because of this, WeGotDomain makes finding used aged domains or domains with pr listed on webmaster forums very easy.

At the time of this review, there are currently 11,092 domains listed, with 532 of them being added today. Keep in mind that sold or cancelled domains are usually removed from the system in an effort to keep the database up-to-date.

The Search System

In addition to the default listing of all the recently added domains, users can search for domains by more specific data. For example, you could search by text, a certain character length, choose to return only certain extensions, or return only the results added in the past day or two. You can also mix and match between any of these choice to provide a pretty advanced search:

While the search capabilities are already pretty decent, they could definitely be improved to provide a very powerful advanced search. Some of the advanced domain search features I’d love to see in the future would be:

• Ability to return domains by certain price range
• Textbox to find a certain string either at the beginning, middle, or end of a domain (Ex. Finding domains that end only in the string forums).
• Increasing the number of days listed in the Added in the Last dropdown list.
• Checkbox option to exclude domains that contain numbers.
• Checkbox option to exclude domains that contain hyphens.
• Checkbox option to return domains by price-type (Ex. Auction, Fixed Price, Offer, or All).
• Checkbox option to determine if the domain contains at dictionary word (as opposed to checking if the entire domain is a dictionary word).

However, the current search system is enough to help you find what you’re looking for. It would just be nice to be able to make it even more advanced.

The Listings

Overall, the listings of aggregated domains are pretty accurate, however there are a number of bugs and inconsistencies with the data. This is probably to be expected, though, since WeGotDomain is collecting and parsing all of the data from various forums, none of which have a standard protocol of how they list domains.

One of the bugs on WeGotDomain appears to be that the system cannot differentiate when a domain seller splits up their domain with a space. For example, one of the domains listed in the database is homes.net which is priced at a very suspicious $25. It turns out that it was actually mistaken for the domain mehomes.net since the domain seller listed it as "ME Homes.net" which some domain sellers often do in order to make them more appealing.

Other bugs and inconsistencies include prices and PageRank being incorrect. In fact, some domains are listed as -1 for PageRank which is impossible. I am curious if WeGotDomain returns this data on the fly or if it was taken at the time the domain was added into their database. If it is the latter, that could explain a lot of the inconsistencies, but also reveals the need to provide more accurate data.

I have a few suggestions for listings table:

First, it would be nice for each of the columns to be sortable. While you can do this with the search form, it is a lot more user-friendly and intuitive for the user to be able to click on the header of each column to sort it by ascending or descending order.

Secondly, an Alexa, Compete, and Age column would nice. While you can currently determine the age by comparing the Created and Expires columns, it takes a few seconds to work out the math; thus an Age column that returns the number of months or years with a decimal (Ex. 2.4 Years) would be welcome.

Lastly, WeGotDomain currently only lists the number of Yahoo backlinks. Considering Google is much bigger than Yahoo, it’d make sense to add a column for Google backlinks as well.

The Treasure

To reiterated what I said in the opening introduction of this review, finding a domain that you can make a profit on is like finding a needle in a haystack. Most of them are crap, but chances are you can find at least a few every day that you’ll be able to profit on.

Below are three great domains I found on WeGotDomain. They’re currently still available as I write this so don’t hesitate to buy one (or all 3) of them if you’re interested. I’m sure one of my readers will. Consider it a gift from me:

• CruiseForums.net - The price is currently $1. This is a great domain, even better if you decide to build a forum for the domain. Estimated Tyler value: $50-75.
• DiscussFaith.com - With an asking price of $129 this domain is a bit more expensive, but it’s a nice domain and is worth it in my opinion if you develop a site around it. As a bonus, it’s also PR3
• TomClancy.org - Priced at $50, this is a steal. If you haven’t heard of Tom Clancy then you’re not a gamer or a reader. Beware of possible trademark issues, but you’re most likely fine - especially if you just plan to flip the domain. However, the domain is most valuable if you develop a site around it as you’ll get very high SERP’s and have a lot of related products you could sell (books or the Rainbow Six series games).

Summary

In the end, WeGotDomain is essentially a time saver by aggregating all of the domains from various webmaster and domain forums into one spot.

While not all the data is 100% accurate or up-to-date, the system still serves a purpose in that it can help you look through hundreds or thousands of domains listed for sale by sellers on various webmaster forums much quicker than you could otherwise.

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The title of this post may be misleading, for this isn’t an interview I conducted with Kris Jones but rather an interview he conducted with me. Kris is President & CEO of Pepperjam, a full-service Internet marketing agency recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in the United States. He was also one of the lucky winners of my Cash Giveaway from last month.

In late September, Kris interviewed me for a running series on the pepperjamNETWORK blog called Meet the Affiliates. Other interviewees of the interview series include Paul Bourque, Darren Rowse, John Chow, and Zac Johnson.

As an added perk, Kris added all of the interviews within the actual pepperjamNETWORK Resource Center, as seen in the screenshot below.

Here is an excerpt of the interview. To read the full interview, check it out on the pepperjamNETWORK blog here.

KRIS: Tell us the story of how you first became a successful blogger, Web site / community builder, and Internet marketer…

TYLER: I first started off by creating websites on interests and subjects that interested me. I never had intentions of monetizing them, or even knew it was possible to make good money from them. It was only once I decided to try throwing up some CPM/CPC ads for the first time around 7 years ago that I realized what was possible.

A little over 3 years ago, I was still living at home in my parent’s basement and was only making around $1,500 a month from my websites at the time. I didn’t have a real job, so the $1,500/month was my entire income. I decided to take a big risk and move out on my own for the first time, trying to live entirely off my online endeavours.

What resulted was fairly amazing. My income skyrocketed the moment I moved out. In fact, the very same month I moved out I sold a site I built for $400, for $10,000. It was the pressure of actually needing to succeed in order to survive that made the difference.

I first created my blog in the fall of 2005 at about the same time of moving on my own, after a popular thread I created about my journey of moving out and trying to make a living from my websites on a large webmaster forum I frequented at the time sparked numerous requests for me to create a blog. The rest is history.

KRIS: Who is a better athlete - Tiger Woods or Michael Phelps - and why?

TYLER: Since you used the word “athlete”, I’d have to say Michael Phelps, only because I think he is more athletic than Tiger. That is, I think he could beat him in a foot race, boxing match, etc. He’s younger, stronger, and faster.

But if you asked me who was more talented then I’d definitely say Tiger. Don’t get me wrong, Phelps is obviously an amazing person and hero some might say, but Tiger is just on another level altogether.

KRIS: What are your current top five musical groups (aka, the White Stripes) and three favorite foods?

TYLER: I’m not the biggest music person, and the music I do listen to is very… odd and varied. Right now, for example, I’m listening to one of those nature CD’s - you know, ocean waves, tropical rainforest, etc. About a month ago, it was Broadway - in particular Les Miserables by the 1985 London cast. I highly suggest listening to it a few times (make sure you get the 1985 London cast version). I also enjoy Jazz, classic rock, and stuff from the 60’s and 70’s. I’m definitely not into rap, heavy metal, or pop.

As for food, now we’re talking! It’s hard to name just three foods, but I’ll say Bokumbap (Korean fried rice), Ribs, and Mexican.

KRIS: What are your top strategies for monetizing Web traffic?

TYLER: I never really considered monetizing traffic difficult. To me, the most difficult part is always getting the traffic in the first place. Anyone can monetize traffic, but not everyone can get traffic

But to answer your question, I’m personally a big fan of selling your ads privately. I know that may not be your favourite answer, running Pepperjam and all *smile*, but in my experience it’s the most effective way of monetizing your traffic. However, this depends on your site and niche, of course. If you have a strong brand, niche, and authorative site, then selling private ads is almost always a good option.

But for PPC affiliate marketing, private ads are out of the question, and that’s when you’d want to use a network like Pepperjam

KRIS: If you could “trade shoes” with anyone for a full month who would it be and why?

TYLER: Another difficult question. Hmm… while I could say something profound or honourable here such as trading shoes with an orphan or homeless person to see just how privileged my life is, the truth is that I’d have to pick somebody who was filthy rich so I could just relax for a month in my mansion and take the private jet here and there.

Plus, that way I could take a few million and give it to the orphan and homeless man I skipped out on

KRIS: Share the best advice you ever received about how to become a successful Internet marketer and community builder?

TYLER: The best advice I could give is really simple and has been said many times, but it’s the most truthful as well: Don’t give up. If you give up, then you can’t succeed. Contrary to what many gurus and self-proclaimed experts say, making money online isn’t easy. It can be easy, but usually requires a lot of work at some point.

Don’t let a few failures get you down. Everybody fails, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. If there is any secret to success, perseverance is probably it.

This was an excerpt of the original interview. To read the full interview, check it out on the pepperjamNETWORK blog here.

I believe the last real update I gave when I was still actively working on my campaign was my Affiliate Marketing Plunge: I’M IN THE GREEN!! post. Basically since then, I haven’t touched my campaign, being preoccupied with other projects. I’ve essentially just left my campaign on auto-pilot for several months.

With that in mind, you’d think that my campaign numbers wouldn’t changed much - after all, I hadn’t touched my campaign in months. But campaigns can often improve over time with no work on your part due to the PPC agencies such as AdWords and Yahoo lowering your bids.

Here’s a 20-minute screencast video I just made sharing all of my campaign numbers from an Excel spreadsheet I keep updated. It does not contain any keywords or stats such as CTR, it simply shows my campaign’s overall profits.

Hopefully that will will provide some motivation to work on your PPC campaigns or get started if you haven’t already. I don’t like to promote laziness or complacency, but it just goes to show that once you have a campaign up and running, it’s essentially done and you can reap the profits month after month. It also illustrates just how easy it is to win one of the bigger prizes in Affiliate Marketing Challenges.

I really need to get off my butt and get some more campaigns up and running. There’s just so much money in this that it’s ridiculous.

[Note from Tyler] I have had several opportunities to speak with the owner of Amped Media, and from my discussions with him I was left with the impression that he is really trying to create a quality affiliate network from the ground up.

There is no shortage of affiliate networks out there. If anything, it’s a saturated marketed. New affiliate networks pop up all the time, and some only last a few months. But on occasion, new networks pop up that really try to create something special. Networks such as MarketLeverage, AzoogleAds, and NeverBlue are 3 examples of established networks that are known to go above and beyond. And after my discussions with the owner of Amped Media, I think that they are on the right track to follow suit so long as they don’t lose focus or become complacent in future success.

Taking advantage of the increasing interest in affiliate marketing, Amped Media is aiming to be one of the premier advertising solutions on the Internet. Although the focus is clearly on cost-per-action (CPA) based advertising, Amped Media says that it also offers conventional cost-per-click (CPC) based advertising as well. Navigating through the various offers on the network, however, reveals that the vast majority are based on a cost-per-sale or cost-per-acquisition model.

Features

Amped Media appears to have all the makings of a successful affiliate network. Every publisher is assigned a personal affiliate manager. This affiliate manager acts as a personal point of contact, assisting the publisher with finding the most lucrative and appropriate advertising campaigns. Amped Media also offers several other benefits, like a searchable database of campaigns, a low minimum payment threshold ($25), and a series of useful tools like a banner rotator.

Boasting 250+ “quality programs at industry leading payouts,” Amped Media has a good variety of different advertising opportunities for publishers to consider. The net-15 payment schedule also appears to ensure that publishers get paid sooner and more efficiently, but appearances can sometimes be deceiving. Refer to the payment section of this review for more information on that.

Among the affiliate programs offered by Amped Media are campaigns for Ban Deodorant, Dani Johnson Work from Home, Acai Berry Supreme, Degree Harmony, and Gatorade Tiger. Payouts range accordingly, with some campaigns offering a payout as high as $27 CPA (or more).

Control Panel

The publisher control panel for Amped Media is very aesthetically pleasing with a relatively simple, but effective design. Navigation to the various sections is done through the series of simple icons near the top of the page, granting quick access to reports, statistics, and account information.

The main homepage is comprised of two columns. In the left column, publishers will find information regarding their affiliate managers, an area for the latest news & updates, quick links to popular sections (like offers by category and a link to download the W9 tax form), and buttons for the super affiliate program and Amped Media News RSS feed.

At the top of the right column are quick statistics for today’s commissions, yesterday’s commissions, and commissions earned in the month to date. Below this are animated sections for some of the affiliate campaigns offered by Amped Media, organized as the following: New Campaigns, Top Freebie / Rewards Campaigns, Top Trials and Sales Campaigns, Top Short Form / Registration Campaigns, and Featured Campaigns. Each campaign is represented by a 160×120 icon, the campaign name, and the campaign payout.

Beyond the main page of the Amped Media control panel are eight additional sections, each of which can be accessed using the icons near the top of the dashboard.

1. Getting Started: A quick guide for selecting advertising campaigns, viewing campaign statistics, tracking earnings, and managing the publisher account.
2. Campaigns: Publishers can search for advertising campaigns through a number of different criteria, including by category, by ad type, and by country. The results page will then display a list of appropriate campaigns, including the campaign type, name, start date, description, expiration date, and payout.
3. Tools: Publishers are offered a number of different tools to increase their earnings, like optimized rotators, popup codes, and data feeds.
4. Statistics: Reports can be generated for any given date period, providing information regarding number of impressions, number of clicks, number of leads, number of sales, EPC, and total money earned. The data can be shown cumulatively for each campaign over a certain time period or with a daily breakdown, amalgamating the data from all campaigns.
5. Payment: Five key figures are shown on this page. Publishers can view the amount due, amount pending (from previous months), amount pending (for the current period), commissions earned to date, and total paid to date.
6. Help: Fundamental tips and information are displayed on this page, but it is far from comprehensive. There is also no contact page or FAQ, both of which would be incredibly useful to both novice and experienced publishers. For example, no explicit information is provided here about how payment is handled.
7. Account Info: Publishers can come here to edit contact information, change the password, retrieve the W-BBEN tax form, and review the terms of agreement.
8. Logout: Publishers click here to log out of the Amped Media system.

The overall layout and navigation of the Amped Media publisher control panel is standard for most affiliate-based networks of this kind. There is nothing out of the ordinary, though it would be useful if the EPC for all the campaigns was shown from the main campaign listing results page.

Registration

The single-page application form for Amped Media consists of three main sections. In the first section, an applicant is required to provide his/her full name, email address, phone number, full mailing address, and a tentative password. In the second section, an applicant provides basic payment information, including the preferred payment threshold ($25, $50, or $100) and a tax identification number (SSN, Corp ID#, or ABN). The publisher also selects whether payment should be made to the company name or personal name. In the third section, the applicant provides information regarding his/her website(s), including the site type, site description, site views/month, site categories, and any additional comments.

An email confirmation of receipt is automatically generated and an Amped Media representative typically calls the applicant within one or two business days to verify the account. During this phone call, the representative may ask about the nature of the applicant’s website, how he/she intends on promoting Amped affiliate programs, and how he/she heard about Amped. The approval process is nearly immediate after this, at which point the publisher is assigned a personal affiliate manager.

Publisher Support

Each publisher is assigned an affiliate manager. This affiliate manager will make contact with the new publisher within a day or two of account approval. Initial contact is usually made via email, but a telephone oftentimes follows so that the affiliate manager can get a better sense of what the publisher expects and would like to see from Amped Media.

Contact information for the affiliate manager is provided in the email message, as well as on the main page of the Amped Media control panel. The affiliate manager can be contacted via email, telephone, or AIM. In the case of email, most responses can be expected within one business day.

Payment Details

Amped Media says that it operates on a net-15 payment schedule, but earned commissions are not immediately credited to the publisher’s account. Payment must first be received from the advertiser before the money can be transferred to the publisher. As a result, there is a 60-day period wherein commissions earned fall into the “amount pending” field of the payment page.

For example, if a publisher generates an affiliate commission on January 17, the invoice is given to the advertiser for this commission on February 1. The advertiser has 60 days (March 31) to provide payment to Amped Media. At that point, the payment can then be sent to the publisher by April 15.

By default, Amped Media issues payments via a check in the mail, assuming that publishers reach the minimum payment threshold of $25. This minimum payment threshold may be increased by request. Upon receipt of the first check, publishers can request to have future payments sent via PayPal instead.

Referral Program

The Amped Media referral program is known as the Super Affiliate Program. This program rewards publishers for referring additional publishers to the Amped Media network.

Seeming under an older system, Amped Media paid publishers $2 for every referral, but this has been revamped to provide greater potential. Instead of a flat payment, publishers can make a 5.00% commission on every approved affiliate that they refer to Amped Media. There does not appear to be any set term, so publishers can continue to earn these referral commissions as long as the referral continues to generate income through Amped Media.

Summary

Since so many affiliate networks offer similar or identical advertising campaigns, affiliate networks like Amped Media must do something above and beyond the call of duty to lure publishers away from the competition. Some networks, for example, offer to match (and beat) the payouts offered by other networks for the same campaigns. Another way to attract the attention of publishers is to offer a large number of exclusive programs. Amped Media does not appear to use either of these techniques.

On the plus side, Amped Media does have several valuable qualities that could make it a worthwhile addition to a publisher’s advertising portfolio. The inclusion of a personal affiliate manager goes a long way in ensuring that a publisher is earning the maximum amount of income possible. The 5.00% referral program is also a definite positive, as is the low $25 payment threshold. While the payment schedule is officially on a net-15 basis, payment is not issued until Amped has received payment from the advertiser, possibly resulting in a delay of 60 days or more.

With a wide variety of campaigns, strong publisher support, and many lucrative opportunities, Amped Media may be a viable option, but it does not have any truly innovative features that set it apart from other affiliate networks.

A couple weeks ago I posted how I had hit a new milestone of 2,000 RSS and to stay tuned to see what I would treat myself for this special milestone. I always know what I’m going to do before I hit the milestone, so I was waiting for this one for quite some time. For my 2,000 milestone I bought a new bed!

I can’t remember exactly how old my old bed was, but I believe I got it around grade 12 which would make it around 8 years old. It was a low futon bed and while the wooden frame was still fine, the futon had over the years developed quite a big depression in the middle in which you could actually feel the wooden underneath as it was only about an inch thick in some spots.

I ended up getting a Queen-sized bed. I was originally thinking of possibly getting a King, just for the ludicrously of it, but once I saw just how insanely massive they were at the store, I realized it would just be stupid to get one. In fact, it wouldn’t have fit in my bedroom properly.

Here are two videos. The first is of my old bed and the second is of my new one. Note how the rest of my bedroom is still badly in need of updating, especially my TV.

 My Old Bed:

My New Bed:

My Old Bed:

My New Bed:

The first night sleeping on my bed was amazing. I really can’t describe how good it was. It’s still great, but I’m more used to it and expect the comfort now, while the first few days were always a wonderful surprise.

I absolutely love my switch from a comforter to a duvet. If you haven’t slept with a duvet yet, I highly recommend trying one out sometime. They’re not that expensive ($50+ for a queen) and are simply awesome. I will never go back to a comforter now that I’ve experienced a duvet.

Bed Frame: $500
Bed & Mattress: $1,200
Sheets: $200
A Good Night’s Sleep: Priceless

My next milestone is set at 2,500 at which point I plan on buying a nice TV for my bedroom. After that, I’ll probably be changing my gifts in accordance to blog earning milestones instead of RSS milestones since it is more important. I’m thinking of buying a big screen plasma TV for my living room, probably at least 50-inches, for when I hit the $10,000 a month milestone.

ThePPCBully.com is a subscription-based service for AdWords advertisers that analyzes and tracks your competitor’s campaigns and advertisements. The main reason why PPC marketing can be very difficult is because of the stiff competition from other advertisers. PPCBully attempts to give you an advantage by tracking every detail of your competitor’s ads.

The system behind PPCBully is actually pretty basic in nature, but is a huge time saver. Basically, PPCBully queries Google based on various keywords that you list in a project, and tracks and logs all of the relevant ads that are displayed via AdWords. It will grab the ad creative, landing page URL, detect how often each ad is displayed, calculate the average position of each ad, and even detect what affiliate program each ad is using (if any). All of this data is then logged for your analysis.

While PPCBully repeatedly states and insinuates on it’s site that it reveals what the profitable ads are, there is no way anyone can ever really know this. It uses the logic that ads that are repeatedly shown and are displayed for long periods of time are profitable, but of course this logic is easily flawed.

However, that does not make PPCBully worthless. It simply makes their claim that it will tell you what ads are profitable misleading. Instead, I find the value in PPCBully to be it’s automated data gathering and mining. If used smartly, PPCBully can give you an edge of your competition by being able to keep a close eye on their movements. You can see if they’re moving up in position on average, stop bidding on certain keywords but increase their position on others, etc.

PPCBully can also be useful in checking out the competition in a possible niche you’re interested in entering before actually spending money to test it yourself. While you could do this by hand, PPCBully can give you much more accurate data as it will mine the results over time and basically give you a larger and accurate sample set of data as a result.

In the end, for me at least, PPCBully is a time saver. It doesn’t do anything you couldn’t do yourself, but do you really want to be checking all of your competitor’s ads for hundreds of keywords and niches every day, or even every hour?

Below is a comprehensive screencast review of PPCBully in which I show you a live working account and how it works exactly:

PPCBully uses what they call PI, or Profitability-Indictor, as a gauge to determine what ads are profitable. They use the following formula to determine the PI:

Ad PI = (Number of Days Seen * Percentage Seen) / Number of Days since Last Seen

Example:

Ad "Birthday Flowers" was seen 12 days out of 18. The Ad was last seen 2 days ago.

• Number of Days Seen: 12 days
• Percentage Seen: 12/18 = 66.6%
• Number of Days since Last Seen: 2 days
• P-Index = (12 * 66.6%) / 2 = 4

Profitable Ad is an ad whose PI is at least 7. You can change this default threshold (7) in the Account page.

The Price

PPCBully costs a monthly price of $49 but has a 60-day money back guarantee so you really have nothing to lose for trying it out.